ब्राह्मणस्य पुत्रशोकः

When he had sent Śatrughna on his way, Rāghava rejoiced with his two brothers, Bharata and Lakṣmaṇa, happily ruling the kingdom in accordance with dharma. Rāma's reign was famous everywhere for its happiness and peace, and it was in the midst of that happiness that grief suddenly struck. A few days later an old brahmin from the countryside came to the palace gate carrying the body of his dead boy; he was a villager, not a townsman, yet in Rāma's kingdom the king's door was open to all who sought justice. Weeping, he poured out words of every kind, full of love and grief, crying again and again, "My son, my son!" A father's lament for the death of his only son in his old age tears at the heart. With this lament begins the well-known story of Śambūka in the Uttara Kāṇḍa, and the poet opens it in pathos to melt the reader's heart. The dead child in his arms was itself his evidence: he cried out before the king not with words alone but with the body. Coming straight after the joy of Śatrughna's victory, this sorrow suggests that even in Rāma's kingdom grief could strike unforeseen.

"What evil did I do in some former body," the brahmin lamented, "that I should see my only son dead? He was a boy not yet grown to youth, only five thousand days old, about thirteen years, and he has met death before his time, my little son, to my sorrow. In a few days your mother and I will die of grief for you, there is no doubt of it. I do not remember ever telling a lie, or doing any violence; I cannot recall ever wronging any living creature. For what evil deed of mine has my son, a mere child, gone to the realm of Yama before he could perform the rites for his forebears?" In Indian thought the cause of sorrow is sought in the deeds of former lives, so he first looked for fault in himself. A son's duty is to perform his father's funeral rites, and the boy had died without doing so, which troubled the father for his own life beyond death as well. His self-examination was honest: he had kept the common duties of truthfulness, non-violence and harming no one, so he was blameless and the fault had to lie elsewhere. The mention of the mother deepens the pathos: one child's death put two old lives in peril.

Then the brahmin turned his reproach on the king. "Never before have I seen or heard of anything so dreadful in Rāma's realm as the death of those whose time has not come. Rāma must surely have some great sin to answer for, since death has come to the children of his kingdom; the children of other kingdoms have no fear of death. So, O king, bring this boy back to life, who has fallen under death's power. If you do not, I will die here at the royal gate with my wife, like one who has no protector, and then, Rāma, you may take on the sin of killing a brahmin and be happy!" That last was bitter irony. Yet he also gave his blessing: "With your brothers, O king, you will live long. We have lived happily in your kingdom, mighty one." In his words outrage and faith are mixed: he blamed Rāma, yet acknowledged the happiness they had known under his rule. Behind them lies an ancient doctrine of kingship: the king's merit and sin are reflected in his people, and the untimely death of subjects is a sign of the king's fault. Rāma would take the charge seriously, since he held himself answerable to his people. To vow to die at the king's gate was, in ancient times, a subject's last resort, a threat of self-sacrifice to win the king's justice.

"Now this grief has fallen on us, who live under your rule, Rāma," the brahmin went on. "We have fallen into the power of time, and we have not the least happiness left. The realm of the great-souled Ikṣvākus is without a protector now; with Rāma as its lord, it seems, the death of children is certain. When subjects are not protected as the rules require, they perish through the faults of kings; when a king's conduct is bad, people die before their time. Or when people in the cities and the countryside do wrongful deeds and there is no one to restrain them, then comes the fear of death brought by time. It is plain that this must be the king's fault, there is no doubt of it, whether the wrong was done in the city or the countryside, since this child has died." Here the brahmin stated a general rule of kingship: a king's duty is not only to live righteously himself but to check unrighteousness among his people, for wherever wrong is done in a kingdom, all suffer its fruit. "Under your rule" reminded the king once more that his subjects' grief was his own. So, pressing the king again and again with words of every kind, burning with grief, he laid his case before him and clasped his dead son to him. The sarga ends in grief; in the next, Rāma searches for the cause with the seers.